What the Walpole Summit revealed about the future of luxury

There was a clear mood running through this year’s Walpole British Luxury Summit, shaped by the sense that luxury is entering a more demanding phase. Growth is slower, confidence is uneven, and customers are more selective about where they spend, with higher prices and polished branding no longer carrying quite the same weight on their own.

What stood out was how often the conversation came back to familiar ideas. Heritage, craft and personality came up repeatedly as the way people talk about credibility in luxury. A clear sense of identity ran through much of the discussion, as brands focused on how to stay distinct in a tougher market.

Across conversations on AI, geopolitics, consumer behaviour and commerce, the same question kept coming back in different ways: what makes a luxury brand worth caring about now?

Burberry’s reset and the return of focus

One of the clearest examples came from Burberry CEO Joshua Schulman, who spoke openly about the brand’s repositioning.

His point was straightforward. Burberry had drifted too far from what it was, in an attempt to fit a looser idea of modern luxury. In doing so, the brand became harder to read. The reset has brought it back to timeless British luxury and the categories people already associate with it.

The trench coat and the scarf were not reinvented but re-emphasised. Campaigns now feature contemporary cultural figures, but the products themselves remain unchanged in character. The brand is leaning into its history rather than softening it.

Early results suggest it is working. Gen Z is now Burberry’s fastest-growing customer group, with strong momentum in China, and the scarf has reappeared as one of the most searched luxury items globally.

Schulman set out the strategy across four areas: brand, product, distribution and culture, with digital running through all of them, and now its fastest growing channel.  

Heritage and innovation are not being treated as separate ideas. Modern tools are being used to sharpen what is already there, not replace it.

Luxury demand has not gone, but behaviour has changed

Jane Hamilton, a senior journalist from The Times, spoke about the pressure on aspirational consumers, from inflation and higher interest rates to weaker job markets and geopolitical uncertainty. None of this removes desire, but it does make people slower to act on it. That gap between wanting something and feeling able to buy it came up repeatedly as a key shift.

For brands, this creates a difficult balance. Neither discounting nor steady price increases feel sustainable, and trust ends up carrying more of the weight. It also reflects a change in how people judge what they buy, with more focus on longevity and emotional value, and a clearer expectation that purchases should last, both physically and in terms of relevance.

Spending is not so much shrinking as moving. Wellness, travel and self-improvement now sit alongside traditional luxury goods in how value is defined. Bain & Company pointed to the continued strength of small indulgences, particularly beauty and fragrance, which give consumers a lower-commitment way into luxury and remain resilient.

Trust has become a pressure point

Bain & Company also argued that luxury’s traditional price-to-value relationship has weakened. Prices have risen sharply across categories like handbags, but creativity, originality and craft have not always moved at the same pace. Over time, that gap affects confidence.

You can see it in consumer behaviour. People question more, compare more, and recognise marketing language more easily, especially younger audiences. Loyalty is no longer automatic.

Brands need to have a clear sense of self – not just strong products, but a clear point of view on what they stand for. Noticeably absent was enthusiasm for trend-chasing, with a stronger preference for timelessness with personality.

AI is already reshaping discovery

Mathilde Haemmerle from Bain & Co shared data showing how embedded AI tools have become in luxury shopping journeys. A significant share of consumers now uses them for recommendations, research and discovery, with even higher usage among top spenders.

Search is fragmenting as people move away from starting with traditional search and instead turn to AI tools for guidance. Discovery is becoming more conversational and less linear. That creates opportunity for smaller brands, since AI systems can surface names that might otherwise sit outside paid ecosystems and are no longer purely dependent on budget for visibility.

But it also brings risk. Luxury brands are used to control context, while AI systems pull from multiple external sources and compress them into a single answer. If that wider environment is not shaped, the brand is still shaped by it.

This is why visibility beyond owned channels kept coming up. Reddit, editorial, reviews, YouTube and other third-party content sit alongside brand messaging in how credibility is formed. Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, was mentioned repeatedly in this context, reflecting how authority is increasingly built through external validation rather than controlled brand output.

There was also concern around agent-led purchasing inside AI interfaces, where transactions happen without a traditional brand touchpoint, risking both data and the customer relationship. That makes owned spaces more important, not less, as stores, apps and websites need to offer something beyond convenience, with service, intimacy and experience becoming the reason to go there at all.

The human element is becoming more visible, not less

One of the most interesting tensions at the summit was this: as AI becomes more present, human creativity feels more valuable, not less. Several speakers suggested that British luxury is well placed here, with its long association with originality, eccentricity and craft, qualities that stand out more in a system that tends towards sameness.

No one was arguing against AI, and most brands are already using it, but the question was where it sits. The strongest view was that it should remove friction rather than define identity. Consumers may accept AI-generated recommendations, but they are far less likely to connect with AI-generated personality.

Luxury is becoming more disciplined

Perhaps the clearest takeaway was simple: luxury is becoming less forgiving. The easy post-pandemic growth period has faded. Consumers are more selective, investors more demanding, and pricing alone will not sustain momentum. The tone in the room was not negative, but focused, with a sense that the next phase will require clearer decisions and more discipline in how brands present themselves.

Identity, consistency and clarity matter more in this environment. Heritage, relevance and technology are now discussed together, not separately. Luxury still depends on aspiration. What is changing is how deliberately that aspiration has to be earned. If you want to talk about how these shifts are playing out in digital marketing, please get in touch.